


A Fine White Haze

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Male Character, Drag Queens, Drugs, Episode: s06e22 Biogenesis, F/M, Het, M/M, Male Slash, Not Really Character Death, POV Original Character, Past Relationship(s), Pregnancy, Romance, Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll, Slash, Stream of Consciousness, character past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 13:29:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5871430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's only room for one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fine White Haze

You and me were punk-rock babies, glitter gods dancing on a razor so fine and sharp it could have been used to cut the cocaine I watched disappear up your nose in a haze of perfect white candy powder and the siren call of our patron saint, the Thin White Duke, when he was all right and out of sight because who says glam rock is dead, baby?

Who says? And why the fuck would we listen?

I found you because I knew you needed me, you with your swagger and your lips, glossed although you would never admit that you, my tough delicious boy with an aftertaste of stomach acid and cold steel, you wouldn’t wear lip gloss, would you? You’re a ladies' man, not a man’s woman. And yet.

I remember when you prowled those runways in those balls, twisting and mincing with a fierce dark love of being beautiful– even in sequins that would have made David throw his hands up in disgust. Purple fucking sequins, boy-o. You wore ’em with a flair that made me shuffle in my jeans and made my skin tremble with repression. I could have leapt from the balconies to declare my allegiance to you and your fine motherfucking body, but you were trying to be legendary and you would have been so angry.

Never mind that Madonna came along and took it all away, our whole childhood scene. Paris is Burning, indeed. Madonna is burning in hell for never having an original dream. Madonna is the ultimate cop-out mimic. She wanted to be Marilyn but without the pills. She wanted to be a gay man, but without the cock. She wanted to rule the world, but without the headaches. Madonna, Madonna, Madonna!

Who cares? I was talking about you.

You remember? Remember how you and I used to end up in the alley outside the theatre, you pressed up against that dirty cold wall, shifting those taut little boy hips up against me like you’d die without contact? You with your pink kitten tongue that begged to lick while you dug your claws into my shoulders and tried to draw blood or just desire from my muscles, pulling so hard I’d think you were trying to kill me until you nuzzled me with that rough pink tongue, licking up the neck and tasting every inch of skin that came under your kitten’s lips. Your head would bounce into the hard concrete behind you and you’d laugh and try to nuzzle deeper, swirling around the earlobe and under the jaw and I knew that nothing would be right until I could dig into the hard boy muscles of your ass and your thighs. When you weren’t a disciple of Ziggy Stardust (a few years too late), you ran long distance every afternoon, turning your legs into sculpture, living marble under my fingers–my runner, my beautifully awkward arms-and-legs runner boy who wanted to play basketball but wasn’t coordinated enough.

It was a drug, the smell of us together, young and stupid and amazed at how skin felt under our fingers, the way muscles flexed, and the way a cute smile and a little courtesy got us enough coke to dip our hands in and sample, like cocaine was the food of love, washed down with a stinging shot of the cheapest vodka ever slung back by two incredibly cute boys in love.

We were those damned Davids, those beautiful youths that the Greeks got their fucking cocks in a twist over when they should have been fucking their wives, we smiled and smiled and when the day was over and we were sick on glitter and coke and compliments, we’d fall down on my shitty, squeaky mattress and touch each other when we were too tired to fuck. Sometimes it was even better to touch than fuck, because it felt like we were something when I just had your hand in mine or when you were running your fingers down my back and murmuring sweet nothings I couldn’t hear.

Then I’d fall asleep in the haze of the gloriously decadent and when I came too the sun was glaring through the broken blinds and you were gone to be the good high school boy who ran and ran until all the excess flesh was burnt away and you were just a living statue, a Donatello, a Michelangelo, an all-American dreamboat that lived and died in my arms.

My sweet, sweet boy.

When you told me it was over, we were sick on cheap powder, drenched in baby oil and gold flecks with the sweet-sick smell of reefer hiding in the corners of my consciousness and somewhere in my brain was half a bottle of scotch that smoothed out all your rough words and turned them into beautiful, delirious poetry that would have made Allan Ginsburg cream his shorts and Ernest Hemingway, that fucking tough guy, turn purple and pretend he wasn’t listening as he hung onto every word that slipped out of your glossy lips.

You gotta get it together, you said to me. Man, you could have a future, but you’re wasting it.

We’re wasting the future together, I told him dreamily, blissed out in my very own Xanadu. Eat, drink, and be merry, cuz tomorrow, we’re our fathers.

 _I’ll never be my father._ That’s what you said before you stood up and closed the door.

You left me and never said goodbye. Our short story was over even before it began. You drifted out like a bad trip and left me to languish somewhere between reality and fever dream and it was the right decision, man, but you were my first love and I never forgot that it was never really over. You never said goodbye.

Looks like it’s a fucking trend with you. I read in the papers that you were gone and I had to go to the funeral. I met your fucking girl there, man, the one who’s not your girl by any official papers, but looks like she had a very productive meeting with your legendary cock? The one that’s probably tight and tough and the only kind of chick you could ever bang with your psychological issues?

I had to talk to her. Now that you’re not dead or anything (and what the fuck is that? Are you Jesus or something?), you’re probably pissed off, if you know. You might not. Your girl is a tough little bitch. She’s got her own thing going on, things so deep and dark you can’t even understand ’em. In fact, she’s starting to slip out of my pen and onto my pages more and more, a blueeyedredhairedvirgin-marybellybluejeanbeautyqueen as poignantly real as anyone Joan Crawford ever played on the silver screen. If you’re reading, if you remember that I was the boy you fucked twenty some-odd years back and I write about you all the fucking time, you might actually recognize your girl as she smiles from my sentences.

She was crying, crying bad, the way my sister did when this fuck, this macho son of a bitch fuck, beat her up and she was crying because she loved him anyway. I don’t understand women. I saw her belly–not my sister, your girl–and I knew you’d left her without saying goodbye.

He’s an asshole anyway, I told her. He always just leaves without even a good-bye note, and you look over your shoulder because you’d think he’d be there, but he’s not, not ever.

Do I know you, she asked me, all pissy sounding, sour, like vinegar or lemon juice.

I knew him. I know how he is. He was my first real love, the kind of thing that makes every other lover taste like Countrytime Lemonade next to the real stuff. He’s a fucking drug, man. You don’t even have to get a sniff to be addicted. You do crazy stuff, just for a little bit of him. At least, that’s how it was with me.

She did a double take. Wait. Are you?

I nodded. The one, the only, the possibly famous. But forget about me, I’m not here to talk about me, I want to talk to you about him. Would you come have a drink with me?

She glared daggers at me with a quick punctuated glance at her belly.

I’m afraid that I can’t.

Come to my hotel room. Please. I just want to talk about him. No ulterior motives.

She looked at me and I think she got that was the plan. We were the bookends of your long (and no doubt enjoyable) career and it was strange to be there, standing over your grave and thinking of what it was like to be in bed with you.

Did you know, I asked her when we got into the hotel room. That he was? That he liked boys?

Oh God, I knew. There was a time when I wanted him so bad I would have told him there could be another man if we could be together just once. I knew.

She looked grim when she said it, sitting down on the lumpy bed and making a face like it hurt to admit the truth.

So you were the first one?

As far as he told me. And you were the last one?

Yeah, I think so. So do we get candy surprises?

Her eyes glittered hard when she said this, like she had a fever or maybe just a dream that wouldn’t leave her brain. I could see immediately that she had loved you until it had sunk into the bones and through the marrow. There was no getting you out of her.

Maybe a cruise to Maui, I suggested.

She laughed and that was crystal, brittle and tinkling like Laura’s glass unicorn. I could smell you on her, seeping out from the marrow and into the air like a fine white haze, a fog, a shadow. Though maybe that was actually the little white pills I killed with three shots of scotch, but I could feel you there with us.

I propose a toast to Fox, I said. May he actually stay dead and not haunt anyone.

She looked at me funny. That’s an odd toast.

He never rested for a second in his life. Maybe he’ll finally get a little rest and he won’t hover in our lives like the aftertaste of cheap alcohol.

You’ve got a way with words, she said. It must be useful in your line of work.

They pay the bills, I replied, trying to be unironic and simple for once, but I was failing miserably and all I could think of were your hard thighs and rough pink tongue and how she looked at me with those eyes that told me she knew how it felt to look up and know he was gone, to know that he was only temporary. She knew and she knew the pain of wanting him anyway.

You still miss him, she said. It wasn’t a question. Twenty years later, and you still miss him.

It’s not like missing, I explained. It’s like needing, like withdrawal, if you’ve ever done withdrawal, I do it every other month when I can’t make the air sparkle with the right phrases. I crave him. I get sick dreaming of him. The way his lips attacked me, I crave that the way I crave a cheap bottle of scotch or a line of coke.

He tasted really good, she said slowly. I was never much on biting or licking and I had to taste as much of his skin as I could. I still can almost taste him and I keep needing to lick my lips, because maybe in a corner I haven’t licked in a while, he’s still there.

Pregnant women crave funny things, I quipped. Like pickles in peanut butter.

Like sex, she replied dryly. Then her mood turned on a dime and she blushed. Oh God, I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but ever since I knew I was pregnant I’ve been itching and it’s just–I’m sorry, that was totally inappropriate–

You were there, Fox, you crazy fucking sex god, and I swear to God you were egging me on. Her itch was so contagious you could catch it just by hearing the craving in her voice.

Everything about right now is inappropriate, I said.

She looked at me, her breathing jagged and harsh and hot. I could feel how warm she was from ten feet away. The way she leaned there, just looking. I wanted to offer her a cigarette or a drink or a trip down the rabbit hole, but I couldn’t speak. I was suffocating in the haze, floating in memories and drowning in that smell that seemed to be coming from her, that faint trace of you that seemed imprinted in her bones.

I wanted her and I never want women. I wanted to steal all of the you she had and leave her high and dry.

She started whispering, her tuneless silent voice entwining with the haze in a diabolical plot to evoke you and invoke you and drive me into her delicate little body to try and find you like Alice and her white rabbit until I found myself head over heels in a land that was not my own and you know, I was dreaming enough in our world. She laid back and my head started to swim with possibilities. What would I do in Wonderland?

I kept hearing her whispering. _Baby’s on fire, better throw her in the water…baby’s on fire and all the instruments agree that–her temperature’s rising but any idiot would know that!_

I could hear her trying to drag me into her world of loss and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t do it to her. I wouldn’t. She had a baby to think about, man.

We should, I should, you should, I tried to speak but it seemed as though I had lost all of the words. I definitely needed to dry out for a week. It’s no good, it’s no good at all.

What are you talking about? Are you okay?


End file.
